About us

The Pavus Restaurant is situated in a small castle that stands on o hill top overlooking the spa town of Laško, which is also known for the largest beer brewery in Slovenia.

About Castle Tabor

The castle is named Grad Tabor and it was built in 11. century. Relatevly small building was used as a hunting base for the counts of Celje. At some point in history it was also an aministritive center, court house,.. It was first rebuilt in 15. centuary when the Turks started invaiding and the people of Laško needed shelter. At this occasion the sourounding wall was built. To keep out the intruders. But by the 1800 it was again in ruins and remaind so until after the 2. world war, when the touristick society decided to clear the overgrown bushes. There were some efforts to revive the castel as a restaurant but unsucesfull until the brewary decided to copletly renovate the castle. Since then the castle is home to a restaurant.

About Chef Marko Pavcnik

Since April 2011 the castle has been in the managment of young chef Marko Pavčnik.

Born in 1980 in Celje, he spends his childhood at his family's farm as the youngest of four children. He enrols in the secondary school for catering. During the school years he spends one of his training periods at the castle as well as the final training period. Castle's restaurant was a part of the Brewery Laško at that time and was very successful and known as a breeding point of many exceptional chefs and waiters. Litlle did he know, that he will start his own restaurant bussines at exactly the same place..

After the training period he worked in many restaurants - climbing the ladder of kitchen hierarchy. He made head chef at the age 19 at various restaurants that thrived while he was cooking. In the following years he enters a few competitions at the Slovenian Convention of Catering and Hospitality and is successful wining silver and gold medals. His success doesn't go by unnoticed and he is invited to join the Culinary Olympic Team of Slovenia.

He is first noticed by professional food critic at hotel Evropa in Celje and receives 4,5 suns (out of 5 possible).

By 2007 he is married and has 2 children.

All the time while he is working in the catering bussines he dreams that one day he will have his own restaurant.

The beginig of PAVUS

»The challenge of opening our own restaurant was irresistible to us, a wish always on our minds. But so much was happening in our personal life, …« At the end of 2010 Marko first received an offer by the Brewery Laško if he would consider reopening their restaurant, which was closed at the time due to lack of suitable tenant. It was a difficult decision for the Pavcnik family with two small children and starting their own business is quite a demanding task.

They knew the effort it would take to open a restaurant that lost all its fame in the years of tenant after tenant, who were more or less unsuccessful. The time of economic crisis seemed especially inappropriate time to start their own business. Especially so for a-high-end restaurant.

But the whish was too strong. He decided to go ahead, make it a family business and April 2011 is the beginning of Pavus. The news of the castle reopening was big and didn't go unnoticed. The culinary critics enlisted the Pavus Restaurat as in of the best in Slovenia.

I agree with cookies usage

Cookies on our web page

What is Cookie?

A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browse while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity

How do we use cookies?

A visit to a this page could generate the following types of cookie.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies services you have asked for, like shopping baskets or e-billing, cannot be provided.

2. Performance cookies

These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.

3. Functionality cookies

These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, a website may be able to provide you with local weather reports or traffic news by storing in a cookie the region in which you are currently located. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

4. Targeting and advertising cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisation.

Cookie management

Cookies can be managed via the web browser settings. Please, see you browser help how to manage cookies.

On this site you can always turn cookies on/off on menu item “Cookie Management”.